Are my GPIOs fried?! HELP!

Here is the short (... no pun intended) and skinny.
Bought a pi cobbler, soldered it up (totally did a bad job but I kind of fixed it, removing any solder bridges). After purchasing some jumper wires , I grabbed a small led out of a set of Christmas tree lights to see if I could use it on my breakout board. Not knowing anything (using my 3rd grade knowledge of power) I decided to wire one end to the Pi's 3v3 and the other to a ground. It lit up, so I thought nothing of it and decided to move on and get the thing blinking. I set my Pi up to use wiringPi's gpio command. I then wired one end of the led to gpio #17 and the other to ground (keep in mind I didn't use any resisters) and used the commands...
CODE: SELECT ALL
gpio mode 0 set
gpio write 0 1

in order to set gpio 17 high. Nothing not even a blink, in fact when ran "gpio read 0" I could see that the pin was still set to low. Upon further investigation I discovered that I can set any gpio that had nothing plugged in high, but the second I connect my led to that gpio it switches back to low. Has anyone seen anything like this? Am I missing something? Sound like a fried gpio? Someone please HELP!!

Full Disclaimer: I have tried multiple methods of toggling gpio pins... wiringPi//python//bash//webiopi

Maybe I don't quite get your explanation... The led only lets current in one direction, so if it is installed 'for output', the same pin can never be read as input

Obviously it is a good practice to always use a resistor. Generally you would most likely fry the led first though...

Maybe I don't quite get your explanation... The led only lets current in one direction, so if it is installed 'for output', the same pin can never be read as input

Obviously it is a good practice to always use a resistor. Generally you would most likely fry the led first though...

I was going to reply with the same response earlier today until I realized it was an inconsiderate poster that posted the same exact question in two different threads on the exact same day (within a couple of hours of each other no less) and it has since been solved in that other thread.....i.e. therefore wasting our time.

... it was an inconsiderate poster that posted the same exact question in two different threads ...

More likely a first-time poster who hadn't realized it takes time for his post to be modded ...

Ah, well...